Rebel TV E46 The End of the Old Normal

The End of the Old Normal: We've Been So Spoiled
We have been spoiled. Since the Great Depression, and certainly since the seventies, we have become accustomed to a high degree of certainty. Until recently, there were a lot of things we took for granted. Grocery shelves would always be full unless there was a snowstorm; then the bread and milk would be scarce for a few days. There would always be gas as the station. Changes in the business cycle and government policy would be slow and incremental. Money in the bank was safe. The vast majority of your neighbors loved America and the ideals it represented-and that went for politicians as well. Those days are gone and their disappearance is a disaster for liberty and prosperity.
This is crucial for you to understand. Without a high degree of certainty prosperity is difficult to achieve. This is important because economic liberty is intimately connected to political liberty. Now I am not talking about natural disasters. Some of those can be planned for and some will destroy life and property indiscriminately. That has been and always will be the case in certain geographic locations. But an earthquake, tornado and even a hurricane are localized. What we are experiencing now is completely different.
Today we live in a deeply interconnected system that is very efficient when it is working. Goods and services move around the country and the world at lightning speeds. One hiccup at any point will cause severe, or even catastrophic, disruptions. A mega-ship stuck in the Suez Canal for days. An accident with huge consequences. But as we have seen malicious attacks on our dependent systems can be just as severe. The hacking of the Colonial Pipeline should be a huge wake up call for us. A Russian group shut down the main gasoline supply pipeline to the entire southeast. In a few days the local stations ran out of gas, in North Carolina the number of stations without gas rose to seventy five percent! No gas, no cars, no deliveries, no work, no ability to get around for groceries. Fortunately, the pipeline was up and running within a week after they paid the ransom so the disruption did not last long. But know this. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea all have hackers whose sole job it is to get into our systems and cause disruptions. And with our weak president demonstrating ineptitude in dealing with this issue, these attacks will only increase. His stupid line that it was a private company that was attacked and they needed to deal with it is absolute bull pucky! This was an attack on vital infrastructure that affected a third of the country. And you know what? The twin towers were also privately owned. That attack was met with ferocity and resolve. Now do I think we should bomb Russia? No, of course not. But we had better put massive pressure on Putin to reveal those responsible and allow us to deal with them. If not, then these actors who work with or are at least protected by these enemy states are going to continue their malfeasance. What will be next? The electrical grid? All of you in your electric cars laughing at the gas shortage, what are you going to do when the lights go out? Do you realize how much more catastrophic that would be? A week or two or three without electricity and people will die by the thousands or tens of thousands. How about a nuclear power plant meltdown? Do we even want to think about that?
Those are external threats that are new to us. Americans haven't faced a real external threat since World War Two. I won't count the cold war because total nuclear annihilation isn't something you deal with and survive. But now we have these foreign actors capable of just as much damage as if they had dropped a bomb on a power plant or pipeline. But now we are subject to crazy uncertainties at the hands of our fellow Americans. The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the fact that government intrusion has broken any restraints placed upon it by the Constitution, law or even common sense. A governor or unelected bureaucrat can shutter your business, put you out of a job, make you cover your face, ban travel, weddings and funerals and even confine you to your home. First Amendment guarantees of freedom of religion and assembly went out the window. And it was all for nothing, almost everything the government told us was a lie. So how can you plan for incompetent, arbitrary or just plain malicious government action? You can't. How can you risk your life savings on a venture that the government may shut down for any of a variety of reasons or no discernible reason at all?
And finally, we cannot forget the uncertainty visited upon us by our fellow citizens. Rioting, burning and looting is becoming a regular feature in a number of cities around the country. Cancel culture can ruin a career or livelihood at the drop of a hat. You could be enjoying a quiet dinner with your spouse when a bunch of hoodlums show up to accuse you of the heinous crime of being a particular race. The world we knew just ten or twenty years ago is gone. We are living in an unfamiliar world where politicians are free to hate the country they serve, where there are a lot of people not working and a glut of jobs remain unfilled, where trillions of dollars are created out of thin air and no one thinks it is a problem and an individual's race is their defining characteristic, imparting guilt or victim-hood. We have accepted a two tiered justice system, endemic corruption, propaganda and total surveillance. It is a world that can only end in disaster and death. And it is a future we are allowing to unfold due to our tepid and inconsequential reaction to it.